


Silver Dust

by LokianaWinchester



Series: Jesus Christ Superstar [6]
Category: Jesus Christ Superstar - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, M/M, back to crippling angst after so many good feelings, curse, fairy tale, in my other fics, so suffer with me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 16:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14336247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LokianaWinchester/pseuds/LokianaWinchester
Summary: Years before Judas was born, his father made a deal with an old lady. It's all about love.





	Silver Dust

There once was a young man, who was deeply in love with a woman. The woman was not in love with him though. He was sad beyond measure, until one day he met an old lady who claimed to be able to make the woman reciprocate his love. At first he was hesitant, wary of how untrustworthy the deal sounded, for the old lady asked for only one small thing in return: The ability to love. The man was of course upset, because if he gave his ability to love, what would he get out of the woman loving him? So he refused. But then the old lady proposed an alternative. She now wanted the ability to happily love. Again the man refused, but the old lady had not finished. She wanted this ability from his first-born. As the man finally agreed to the deal, sealed by the lady blowing a silver dust into his face, he vowed to himself, never to have a child, because that way he could trick the old lady. Or so he thought.

Doubtful as he was, the man waited a few days until approaching the woman of his dreams again, ready to have his heart broken one last time. But as soon as he knocked on the door, it flew open and in his arms, he suddenly held his love.

They were happy together, so in love as rarely anybody had ever been. And after some time, the man forgot about the old lady. A year after their wedding his wife revealed that she was pregnant and the man suddenly remembered the old lady. He did not have it in him to tell his wife about his encounter, because he was afraid, she would leave him if she knew her love might be forced. When their son was born, they named him Judas. He was a lovely child and his mother was proud and loving, but his father was never relaxed around him, never open about his feelings and he never gave away his dark secret.

Apart from that, Judas had ordinary family with an ordinary reputation and an ordinary house in an ordinary city. He breathed like any other boy, ate like any other, drank like any other. But the one thing he could not do was love like any other. For a long time Judas did not know that he was different from anybody else, but the older he became, the more he realised he was. 

When Judas was three years old, his parents had another child. Judas’ sister was a little ray of sunshine, she had beautiful soft locks and she smiled with the most stunning toothless grin. Judas adored her, he was never found very far from her, always watching out for any harm, protecting her like a precious treasure. A year after she was born, only a week after taking her first steps, she fell ill. For several weeks she was expected to recover, but when she became thinner and thinner, her skin ashen, almost silver, and her eyes glassy, Judas started crying himself to sleep. When she died, he did not sleep for days; a deep sadness settled on the whole house. Judas suffered a great deal; eventually he recovered, but he would never quite forget his baby sister.

His father reacted to this not by telling his family about the deal he had made, but he started working more and distancing himself further from Judas and even his dearly beloved wife. 

Like any little boy, Judas loved his mother. He adored her; she was his saviour when the other kids in the neighbourhood picked on him, she sang him to sleep and she made his favourite food when his behaviour was good. When he was 7 years old, she fell ill. Judas had not forgotten what had happened to his sister and even though his memories of her illness were blurry and unclear in his head, he recognised the same signs on his mother, when after few weeks she seemed to get better and left the bed more frequently again. He noticed the change in her skin colour, she seemed grey, or maybe silver, but when he tried talking to his father he was dismissed harshly. Shortly after, his mother did not wake up from her afternoon nap. Judas sat in the corner of her room, next to her bed, holding her cold hand, when his father returned from work.

Again, instead of caring for his son, the widower stayed away even later, leaving Judas in the care of neighbours. A few weeks went by like this before Judas was sent to an orphanage, not even hearing one word of farewell from his father. Nobody thought anything of the death of Judas’ mother, because the causes were natural but Judas felt that something was off, something different to the sadness he also felt. He felt like he was responsible for the death of his mother and sister, but he did not know how that would be possible. 

The orphanage was fine. Judas was fed and clothed, but he missed his mother everywhere. He missed the hugs and gentle kisses, she pressed to his forehead before he fell asleep. He missed helping her around the house and listening to her voice. 

After a year of solitude, he made a friend. Jakob was a year younger than Judas, and he did not like to talk much. But he did talk to Judas, at night when everybody else was asleep and the horrors that haunted them both, kept them awake, no matter how much they wanted to sleep.

They began spending their time together and nobody else, and soon they started smiling, then laughing. Judas was happy.

But then Jakob became weak, stopped eating, a single silver streak appeared in his black hair, and his skin turned grey, as had Judas’ mother’s, without any apparent problems. Judas started to withdraw into his head, barely eating himself, but he still kept watch by Jakob’s bedside, day after day. Judas did not understand why people always died around him, and he prayed. But God did not hear him and Jakob succumbed to sickness before long.

Years passed and Judas got a bad reputation. He refused to get to know people and he lived mostly on his own in a cheap flat he could barely afford in good times, much less in bad ones, so he resorted to begging when necessary.

He found this better than watching those around him die.

One day he met a girl when he was on the market. She was beautiful and he was instantly filled with dread because death was upon those close to him. Then the girl smiled at him and Judas ran away and hid in his bedroom for three days, hoping the girl would forget him. But the next time he was on the market, her sweet smile greeted him and she spoke to him in a gentle tone.

It took all his confidence and willpower for him to respond and before he did, he promised himself to leave her at the first sign of sickness.

They had a few happy hours together, then happy days, months passed and sometimes Judas could let himself forget about his condition. But then his beloved fell into a deep slumber she did not awaken from, a slumber in which she almost seemed to glow in a silver light, and no matter what he tried, nothing helped. So after waiting seven days, caring for her the best that he could, he decided to make true on his promise. He cut his hair, sold his clothes to a merchant, alerted a doctor and left town.

He never looked back. He did not know if it had worked, but it took him months to stop crying himself to sleep. He would never have what everybody else took for granted. He would never have what he craved most. True, happy, reciprocated love.

Judas made a living. But he did not really live.

Then one day he met a man. Jesus, he was introduced to this man. Some said he was the son of God. And after talking to Jesus, Judas believed them. But Judas could not relax, even if this man was the son of God, he would not be safe from Judas.

Judas did not allow himself to feel anything. He followed Jesus loyally through all lands and wherever he went. And Jesus loved Judas dearly, Judas knew.

One day Judas realised he loved Jesus too. For weeks he waited for the end, waited to find Jesus unable to continue their journey one day soon. But that day never came. Jesus seemed resistant against Judas’ bad influence.

So Judas let himself love Jesus. He lowered the walls around his heart and when Jesus noticed the change in Judas, he started kissing him, every now and then, slowly manifesting a presence inside Judas’ very heart so that not an hour went by that Judas did not think of Jesus. Eventually the kisses changed, Jesus had a clear intent and Judas was ready, so when their kissing led to more, Judas felt truly happy with what he had, knowing that Jesus was out of harm’s way.

Judas was living what he had never dared to dream. He had somebody to love, that loved him back, and if that person was incidentally the son of God, Judas hoped it would make him a better person along the way.

Judas loved Jesus with all his heart and soul, something he had sworn to never do again, but now Jesus was there and everything was different.

What Judas did not know was that, while the effects of his condition did not manifest on Jesus, they did so, increasingly on everybody else around him. People became dangerously obsessed with Jesus, the temple was corrupt and the negative forces slowly but surely became too much for Jesus.

Judas wanted to help, he went to the Pharisees, because he wanted Jesus to be safe. The silver shine of the coins should have been warning enough, but Judas had become soft and trusting. The Pharisees came to arrest Jesus, took him to the Romans and all Judas could do was kiss him goodbye in one last desperate show of utter devotion.

Only then Judas saw that what usually killed the people he loved, the silver and the passive loss of their will to live, this had turned sour, instead of making Jesus die slowly and without escape, it made the common people aggressive. A silver glint in their black eyes, an evil force too great for Jesus to overcome or even escape from. The silver curse would kill Jesus as well, only not directly, there was too much good in him.

Instead it would be infinitely worse. When Judas found out they were going to crucify Jesus he saw only one hope for the man he loved.

Judas hung down from the branch by both shaking arms, in a final resort to faith, a show of his desperation, he uttered what he had not in years: a prayer, a teary eyed prayer, begging of God to save the man Judas so loved, for he was about to remove himself and with him the horrible curse that lay upon him from the world of the living.

He begged God to save his son, if he was willing to save anybody, it had to be Jesus. Judas refused to believe, that God would see his own son die in vain. And then his fingers shifted on the wood, made slippery by his sweating palms, his grip loosened, he lost precious hold. The last thought in Judas’ mind as the rope tightened around his neck, was of Jesus and his beautiful smile, that reminded him of the whole-hearted grin, his little sister had given so freely, thought of his mother and Jakob, quietly on their beds, looking so peaceful. He thought about the girl he left and the man he was about to leave and hoped that both of them would find happiness when he was finally removed from the world. And when the coarse rope cut off his air, a gust of wind swept over the barren field, the rope gently swung from side to side, the empty loop adopting a silver shine, as a trickle of silver dust fell gently onto the dry earth, glittering in the setting sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Hang out with me on [tumblr](https://lokianawinchester.tumblr.com/) or look at my Jesus Christ Superstar posts on [my side blog](https://this-broken-man.tumblr.com/). Feel free to send me prompts!


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